


We've Built This Town On Shaky Ground

by half_alive



Series: It's All A Fickle Game We Play [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Criminal Barry Allen, Detective Leonard Snart, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Established Relationship, Flirting, Hero Leonard Snart, M/M, Metahuman Leonard Snart, Police Officer Leonard Snart, Secret Identity, Thief Barry Allen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 17:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17492225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_alive/pseuds/half_alive
Summary: The Flash, to the eternal frustration of Detective Leonard Snart and the rest of the CCPD, has proven impossible to catch. Just one of many super-powered people who have popped up in the years since the Particle Accelerator exploded, the thief has been slipping out of Len's grasp both as a detective and a metahuman vigilante known as Captain Cold. It doesn't help that he keeps flirting with Len, or that it's starting to affect him despite the fact that Len already has a boyfriend, Barry, whom he loves and wouldn't trade for the world.Only, maybe everything isn't as it seems.





	We've Built This Town On Shaky Ground

The Flash is long gone by the time Len gets there, as per usual. Nevertheless, he has the dispatch team comb the museum as silently and efficiently as possible, just in case. It wouldn’t do them much good even if their thief were still there, given he’d just slip away as soon as he caught sight of them, but Len is always clinging to the hope that one day he’ll get lucky and take the bastard down.

 

He steps into the main hall, carefully sweeping the room with his flashlight, gun raised. There’s no sign The Flash was ever even here — no tripped alarms, no broken glass, not so much as a skidmark on the floor. It’s part of his signature, slipping in and out in the blink of an eye, never leaving anything behind.

 

The display case for the Garzynia Diamond is empty. Len curses under his breath. It’d just come to town two days ago for a special exhibit and they’d been so careful in securing it, knowing exactly how enticing it would be to any thief worth their salt. They’d had an escort all the way here from the airport, armed guards and armored vans. They’d sent a dummy deploy out on an alternative route. They’d triple-checked the locks on the display case, custom-ordered the new state of the art glass they’d been guaranteed was tamperproof — they’d even quadrupled nighttime security in the building.

 

Which, now that Len thinks about it, is odd. He does another take of the room, but there’s no guards in sight.

 

He raises a hand to his earpiece, tapping it with his index finger. “Anyone got eyes on the security guards?”

 

There’s a crackle of static, followed by silence. He frowns, tapping at the com a little harder this time. “Hello?” Still nothing.

 

“They can’t hear you,” comes a familiar voice from behind him, sounding amused. Every muscle in his body tenses and his stomach twists, though he’s not sure if it’s with trepidation or excitement. He whirls, gun at the ready, but The Flash is nowhere to be found.

 

“What’s the matter, Scarlet?” he goads, scanning every inch of the room with calculating eyes. Where the fuck is he? There’s too many places to hide. “Afraid to come out here and face me?”

 

A laugh echoes through the air. “You look good, Len. Though, I will say I prefer your other uniform. There’s just something about a man in a mask.”

 

Len freezes, a cold sense of dread washing over him. No one knows about his vigilante alter-ego, Captain Cold, apart from the small handful of people who have helped him out with it over the years. Nowadays, it’s mostly just Hartley and Mick there to back him up, but he’s still confident no one else who knows would say anything to a despicable criminal like The Flash.

 

Though, it’s hard to picture that smirk under that cowl and this dance The Flash is always doing with him and think of it as _despicable_. The Scarlet Streak, as he’s been dubbed by a few of his more fanatic fans, is more of an annoying nemesis than evil villain. Sometimes, it’s almost fun to go up against him, nothing like the fear he feels when he’s facing down some of his real enemies, like Mirror Master or Killer Frost.

 

He shakes it off. He doesn’t have time to question how The Flash knows who he is, and he certainly doesn’t have time to start doubting himself. “If you know who I am, you know what I can do. So how about you come out here and we have a real go of it. See who’s better.”

 

Another laugh. It sounds like it’s coming from all around him and, really, it could be. The Flash is fast enough to be everywhere at once.

 

“Another time, detective. I have a diamond to re-home.”

 

That’s the other thing about The Flash; for some unknown reason, he never keeps what he steals. It tends to end up in the hands of low-income, law-abiding citizens more often than not, like he’s some kind of real life Robin Hood stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Occasionally the trophies end up back in the hands of the CCPD, turned over by unsuspecting people who woke up one morning to find it sitting on their table, but more often than not they resurface weeks or months or years later after they’ve been traded around the Black Market so long it’s impossible to tell who put them up in the first place.

 

Len lowers his gun. He’s not going to catch The Flash tonight and, even if he did, he’s not going to shoot him. “Yeah? Why stick around at all, then? We both know you could’ve been out of here two seconds after you grabbed it.”

 

“Maybe I just wanted to see you,” a voice whispers just beside his ear, hot air blowing across the side of his face. He’s so close Len can feel the heat off his body, even as he takes a step back and whirls to face him, gun raising from his side again, pointed at empty space.

 

It’s too late — The Flash is already gone in a whoosh of air that has every banner in the room swinging on its hangers. The one announcing the Garzynia Diamond floats leisurely to the ground in front of the empty display case, like it’s mocking him.

 

Len holsters his gun. He clenches his teeth, followed by his fists, and raises a hand up to his coms — working, now, as expected — to call off his men and get a team of CSIs in here. They won’t find anything, not even a suggestion of a fingerprint, but Len isn’t anything if not thorough. Besides, they still have to locate the security guards, who were no doubt tied up and stowed away somewhere before they could even realize what was happening.

 

He feels hot all over and, reluctantly, realizes he can’t be totally certain that it’s just frustration. He can still feel The Flash’s breath on the back of his neck, the shell of his ear, feel the heat of his body so close to him.

 

_Fuck_ , he thinks, and shakes it off right along with the guilt that swims up his throat. There’s no way he’s getting all hot and bothered over _The Flash_.

 

❄

 

“Anything?” Len asks, stepping into the forensics lab on the upper level of the precinct. Julian Albert, their resident CSI since the meta-human crisis cropped up three years ago, looks up from his desk with an unimpressed twitch of his eyebrows.

 

“If there was, you would already have heard about it.”

 

Len swallows, feeling awkward. He glances around the lab, casing it out in spite of himself. There’s an entire shelving unit of evidence that still needs to be processed, despite every machine in the room whirring away at all hours of the day. They’ve been backlogged for what feels like forever, though it’s really only been an issue the past three years. Ever since the particle accelerator exploded and gave who knows how many people unnatural abilities, crime has been up in the city and the number of cases they’ve actually been able to solve has drastically lessened.

 

“Honestly,” Julian continues, though he’s turned back to scribbling something down on his notepad, “I don’t know why you still have me run these. We all know we aren’t going to catch _The Flash_ ,” he spits the name out with distaste, never having warmed to the idea of metahuman aliases, “by processing his crime scenes.”

 

“So, what?” Len turns to him, bristling. “We’re just supposed to do nothing? Let him get away with it? Turn a blind eye just because he’s particularly good at being a criminal?”

 

Julian just rolls his eyes. “Of course not. I’m just saying you should stop deluding yourself into thinking any of our usual tactics are going to work with him. He’s anything but usual. None of them are. Perhaps we should start fighting fire with fire, is all.”

 

Len blinks. “Fire with… Are you suggesting we use metas?” He frowns, wondering what’s brought this on. He’d always thought Julian was against metahumans completely, like so many people of Central City, turning his nose up at them and hoping they all get locked away just for existing. Len himself had brought up the idea of a metahuman task force to the police commissioner nearly two years ago, only to be shut down completely and all but laughed out of the room.

 

Julian shrugs. He turns the page of his notebook, then sets it off to the side and pulls his keyboard forward. He squints at the screen. “Well, this… Captain Cold seems to be the only one who’s come close to catching The Flash.”

 

Len feels like he’s been dropped into some alternate universe where everything is upside down and backwards. “I’m sorry, _what?_ Are you suggesting we use _Captain Cold?_ ”

 

Julian wrinkles his nose in disgust. “ _No_ ,” he says with force. “He’s just as much a criminal as the rest of them, taking the law into his own hands. I’m suggesting we hire law-abiding, non-lethal metas who have gone through police training and passed all their evaluations, like the rest of us.”

 

“I…” Len shakes his head. He draws his hands up to his hips, resting them there as he stares down at the floor. “You were completely against a metahuman task force when I brought it up before. What changed?”

 

Julian looks at him now. There’s something meaningful but indecipherable in his gaze, and Len feels pinned to the spot. _He knows_ , he panics for all of four seconds before he realizes it’s impossible. Whether or not Julian’s opinions on metahumans as a whole have changed, there is no way he wouldn’t turn Captain Cold in the moment he found out who he really was, whether they work together or not. It’s not even like they’re friends, or friend-adjacent. They can barely stand each other on a good day. The only thing they have going for them is a mutual respect that comes from being good at their jobs and knowing they couldn’t do their own if the other wasn’t doing theirs.

 

Eventually, Julian’s gaze loses its intensity and he shrugs. “We understand them better now.”

 

Len frowns, but decides to leave it nonetheless. He lets his hands fall from his hips. “Let me know if you find anything,” he says. Julian just scoffs, which he takes as his cue to leave.

 

❄

 

He closes the door behind him as gently as he can, wincing as it creaks. The lock is even louder, filling the short entryway with an audible _clang_. Thankfully, nothing in the apartment stirs, and Len breathes a sigh of relief as he toes his shoes off and hangs his coat up.

 

He pads into the kitchen, pulling his phone from his pocket. There’s a missed call from Mick, most likely about the robbery tonight, and two texts from Lisa in all caps about something that’s probably not as urgent as she’d like him to believe. He texts her back anyway, a quick ‘you good?’.

 

“It’s late,” comes a soft voice from the living room, just as he’s flicking on the kitchen light. He nearly jumps. His chest clenches, and he turns to face the sofa with an apology already halfway off his tongue. It fades as soon as he sees the gentle smile on Barry’s face.

 

“I missed you,” he whispers from where he’s sprawled out on the couch with a throw blanket tossed over his legs. He looks warm and comfortable, homey. Even now, over a year after they started living together, it does something to his heart.

 

Len smiles back at him, crossing the room to kiss his forehead. He strokes the hair out of his eyes, kneeling beside him in front of the coffee table. “I missed you too,” he murmurs. Their eyes meet, Barry’s full of all that love and affection he’s always given so openly to Len. It warms him down to his core the way it always does, ever since their first kiss all those years ago.

 

Len takes in the half empty mug of hot chocolate on the coffee table and the sleepy look on his boyfriend’s face with a frown. “I’ve told you not to wait up for me.”

 

Barry just smiles indulgently, dropping his legs to the floor. His hand is warm where it curls around the back of Len’s neck, who is always freezing cold no matter how high they keep the heat. “And I’ve told you I don’t mind doing it,” Barry whispers back against his lips. “I like going to bed with you.”

 

They kiss softly at first, nothing but love, and Len’s heart swells just a little. He can feel the tension that’s been building since he got called away start to disappear under Barry’s touch. It’s been like this since the start — being with Barry has always felt like being right at home, completely comfortable in his skin and content with his life. Even when things have been rocky, when Barry went to stay with Joe for a month and stopped taking his calls or when they used to only kiss in dark places with the taste of alcohol on their lips. Even then, it was like a weight lifted from Len every time Barry was in the room with him. And if they were touching, if Barry’s hand was resting against his while they both pretended it wasn’t, it felt like all the pieces of Len’s life were falling into place, rearranging to fit exactly where they belonged.

 

“I love you,” Barry murmurs between kisses. Len tugs his hair a little harder in response, tilting his head back just enough to sweep his tongue into his mouth. His other hand slides down his side, feeling the lithe muscles underneath his loose t-shirt.

 

Barry’s moan is all the encouragement Len needs to pull his shirt off, leaving Barry’s hair even more of a mess as he raises himself up to climb onto the couch with him. He brackets Barry, legs on either side of his and arms blocking him in so he has nowhere to go. Not that Barry would want to go anywhere, with the way he’s gripping Len’s shirt and arching up into him.

 

“Rough night?” Barry asks him, unfisting the back of his shirt in favour of inching it up and off of him. Len lets go of him just long enough to yank it off himself, throwing it somewhere across the room to be dealt with in the morning.

 

Barry’s always been so good at reading him, despite how much Len prides himself on being a closed book. It used to annoy him that he could never hide anything from Barry the way he could everyone else, but now Len counts it as a blessing. There are so many things he can’t tell Barry about, things he needs him to know, and having these moments feels like the closest compromise.

 

“Awful,” he says, and kisses Barry even harder. He grinds his hips down against him, feeling how hard he’s getting, and they groan into each other’s mouths. “ _Fuck_ , baby.”

 

He only ever uses pet names in the bedroom, and Barry grins nearly every time, like it’s a personal achievement of his to have Len undone enough to let go of some of his hang ups. Len kisses the wolfish smile off him as soon as it appears, shoving his hand between them and causing Barry to turn his head back on a moan instead.

 

“ _Len_ ,” he groans. His hand climbs up Len’s shoulder until it’s resting on the back of his head. He pulls him forward and buries his face in the crook of his neck, his lips against his skin. His hair tickles Len’s face, smelling faintly of the shampoo he’s been using all four years Len’s known him, and Len hides his sappy smile in it. It’s out of place here, when Barry is grinding against him and their bare skin is pressed tantalizingly together, but sometimes Len feels so much love for him that he doesn’t know what to do with it.

 

It’s still hard to believe that they have this, that they’ve built this little life together and Len can come home every night to take Barry apart on a couch they share, that they spent an hour bickering over in the department store. There had been a time where this had seemed impossible. Years ago, Len used to go to bed in his lonely apartment dreaming about having this but knowing he never could, imagining waking up beside him in the morning but instead spending each day pretending he didn’t care about him at all.

 

They’ve come a long way since then. Now, Len wakes up beside him every morning. He knows the way Barry looks with bedhead, dragging his way through getting ready with a look on his face like he’d rather be anything but alive. He gets to kiss that look off of him, to cook him breakfast on the days he isn’t called into the station early and make sure Barry gets out the door with enough time to stop for coffee with his sister, Iris, before he has to be at the lab.

 

It still feels a little impossible. Some days, Len almost wants to pinch himself just to be sure this is real. Others, he finds himself waiting for the other shoe to drop and this tiny corner of the universe of theirs to fall apart.

 

Today isn’t one of those days. Today, Len runs a hand down Barry’s chest, just over his heart, and feels nothing but love.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Day 1 of DCTV Week on Tumblr. I've wanted to write something like this for a while, but this just gave me the motivation I needed to finally sit down and just get it out. That said, I absolutely loved this and am super inspired, so this will almost definitely be a series. I haven't decided whether to start with the prelude to this or the continuation, so let me know if you'd rather see their relationship/getting together/etc or the fall out from where they are now <3
> 
> A continuation would be added as extra chapters whereas a prequel would be its own separate work in the same series. Eventually I'll write both, it's just a matter of which is first.
> 
> Comments and kudos always make my day, and you are also totally welcome to come chat with me on [Tumblr](https://frozenflash.tumblr.com)


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